


Replaced With Visions of You

by binarystarkillers



Series: Stephen King's Gay Subtext Has Ruined My Life [2]
Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: M/M, Richie Tozier Needs a Hug, SOFT GAYS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:36:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21958240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/binarystarkillers/pseuds/binarystarkillers
Summary: “What if a boy likes another boy?”Stan’s eyes widened in understanding, and he scooted backwards, his hand falling off of Richie’s shoulder. For one horrible moment, the pit in Richie’s chest grew larger, the gnawing hunger spreading all through his body until he felt dizzy. The silence, the horrible, awful silence stretched like a living thing between them, something slimy and evil.“I thought I was the only one,” Stanley whispered, and Richie’s world came crashing down around him.
Relationships: Richie Tozier/Stanley Uris
Series: Stephen King's Gay Subtext Has Ruined My Life [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1663831
Comments: 4
Kudos: 129





	Replaced With Visions of You

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is for the Stozier Secret Santa exchange on Tumblr! I wrote this for offputtingoffspring. Happy Christmas, Tristan!
> 
> Title is from 'Something Human' by Muse. :)

It was over, but that didn’t stop Richie from waking up screaming.

His nights were restless, tossing and turning under blankets that felt too heavy, trapping him in his bed that, when the hour was right, felt like more of a coffin. He supposed that was accurate, he thought with no small amount of bitterness one sleepless night in July, staring at an inky sky. That his bed would lead him to his grave.

“I know you, Richie,” It hissed into his ear, a voice that didn’t even fucking exist but managed to worm it’s way under Richie’s skin, growing through his veins and scratching on his bones. “I know you better than they ever will.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Richie muttered, teeth grinding together with how tightly he was clenching his jaw. “Just shut up.”

“They won’t like you once they find out, Trashmouth,” It leered, his affectionate nickname turning ugly and twisted in It’s mouth. “He won’t like you. You really think they’ll like you once they find out ‘what else-”

Richie screamed, a hoarse, guttural sound that seemed to bounce around his room at the sound of his joke being used against him, being used against him like that, because-

“Richie? Are you okay?”

Warm light flooded his room, and Richie sat up, jamming his glasses onto his face. The yellowish light of the hallway made a rectangle of glorious light in his room, contrasting the moonlight and creeping shadows of the dark. “I thought I heard something,” his mother continued, her hair curlers turning her shadow into something horribly familiar. 

“I’m okay,” Richie said, trying, and failing, for his trademarked Richie Tozier Grin, the one that could make his friends laugh or roll their eyes at a moment’s notice. “Just sneezed, no problems here, no ma’am, nothing to see, nothing to hear, besides the lovely cadence of a poor ol’ boy sneezin’ after he caught a damn cold hikin’ to school uphill both ways,” Richie rambled, his voice turning vaguely southern. Laughing, his mother cut him off.

“All right, Richie. If you’re sure,” his mother replied, the worry lines beginning to creep across her face deeper than usual as she frowned at her son. She turned around, smiling softly as she closed Richie’s door, and as she walked away, Richie finally let himself fall apart, burying his face into his pillow as he shook with silent sobs, bathed in the cold moonlight.

***

“You look like hell, Richie.”

Richie scoffed, pushing his glasses up his nose with the palm of his hand, careful not to stick his cigarette in his hair as he leaned against the cold brick of the Derry high school, “Why, thank you, m’Eds, and you look dashing yourself, if I might say so.”

“Beep fucking beep, Richie. Seriously, are you sick or something?” Eddie replied, the worried rise to his voice giving his act away.

“Why, Eds, worried that I’ll get your mummy sick the next time I sneak through her window?”

“Charming as ever, Rich.”

Richie spun around, a wide grin breaking across his face at the new arrivals. “Beverly! My dear! The love of my life!” he cried dramatically, pushing past Bill and Stan and replacing Ben at her side in order to pretend to swoon before draping himself across her shoulders. “It’s been far too long since we were apart, my love.”

“H-hi, Bill, h-how are you? I’m g-g-good, th-thanks. Stan, h-how’re you?”

“I’m well, Rich, thank you. The weather’s nice, isn’t it?”

“Stanley! Alas, sir Urine, I must meet the love of my life, Miss Marsh, before I can greet you. And, pray tell, does this urchin bother you?”

“Fuh-fuck off.”

Beverly laughed, wrapping an arm around her best friend, finally her height now that he was leaning on her. “Alas, dear princess,” she began, a teasing glint in her eye that Richie had learned to love. Stanley dropped back to stand next to them, his shoulder just barely brushing Richie’s. However, before she could continue what Richie was sure to be a dramatic love confession, full of slayed dragons and mystical towers, the final figure of the group spoke up. 

“Richie? Like a girl? Fake.” 

Richie went completely rigid, jumping away from Bev as if he had been burned, his smile fixing in place, turning plastic. He hadn’t even heard Mike turn up, his hands stuffed in his letterman jacket, an easy smile in place. His voice had been kind, teasing, but Richie’s blood ran cold at his warm words. 

“And what the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

Mike raised an eyebrow at Richie’s tone. “I don’t know? It’s just that you know, you’ve never really talked about girls. It’s always comic books this and horror movies that, you know? It was a joke,” he continued, nervously kicking up a pile of dead leaves and looking at Richie with that same careful concern his mother had last night. “Sorry.”

Richie let his breath out in a careful sigh, and he felt Stan’s hand gently brush against the back of his. 

“Worry not, Sir Micholas,” Richie grinned. “Besides, you know the only girl for me is-”

“Finish that sentence and I’ll punch you in the throat.”

“You can’t reach.”

“Oh, you fucker.”

Bill had to grab Eddie’s arms to hold him back, and Richie used the excuse to slip into the school building. Outside, the background noise of a thousand teenagers talking had been drowned out by the whistle of harsh October wind through the trees, but stepping into the school was, in Richie’s mind, pretty much stepping into hell. Uncomfortably warm, Axe-stinking, hell.

“Hey, Tozier!” he heard a voice call, and before he could place it, Richie felt himself moving, pushing people aside in order to get inside the building, all but throwing himself into his seat in the third row, his battered old backpack hitting the tiled floor with a dull thud. The teacher, Mr. Miller, raised an eyebrow, but for once, didn’t speak. With jerky, harsh movements, Richie pulled his torn notebook out of his bag, rooting through the debris at the bottom of it for a pencil. 

Students began to trickle in, and, as if far away, Richie heard them murmur, a few cursory glances thrown his way. Normally, he’d snap some crass joke at them, try to break the tension, but his tunnel-vision could only focus on the pencil in his hand, shaking slightly as his mind repeated Mike’s greeting to him.

Richie? Like a girl? Fake.

As if in a trance, Richie saw himself put his pencil to paper, writing his name with trembling fingers which slowly deteriorated until his name became an unintelligible scrawl.

The world seemed to swim around him, grey slate and white walls blending together in a drab waltz. Dimly, he noticed that the lead of his pencil had snapped, a graphite smudge against the notebook paper. More grey. More fucking grey. 

He’d never been more grateful for the sound of the bell, even though that’s the worst cliché of all. The noise of students leaving the room tasted grey.

Footsteps slammed against the concrete, the echoing sound only linked to him by the dull pains that ran through his ankles. 

The back school doors had always been creaky, but that screeched to a crescendo as Richie shoved them open, the cool air hitting his face and allowing him to breathe for the first time. 

“What the hell am I doing?” He asked aloud, and began to laugh, a slightly hysterical cackle that garnered the fleeting attention of some passing students, before they shrugged and moved on. “Fucking Trashmouth,” he thought he heard a kid say to their friend. “I swear to God, what’s he taking?”

Nobody stopped to talk to him. Nobody waved or smiled at him. And nobody asked if he was okay when sobs started to mix in with the laughs, tears streaming down his face as he giggled. 

Well. Nobody but one. 

“Rich?”

Richie’s neck twisted painfully with how quickly he turned to the side, feeling as if he’d been trapped under a stage-light in a play he didn’t know the lines to. He waited for the same look to cross the other boy’s face: that blend of fear, panic and concern that he’d grown all too accustomed to; the expression that twisted itself into Richie’s life as the nightmares did.

But of course, Stanley only smiled at him, a shy twist of lips that was so normal, so Stanley that Richie felt his chest begin to unfurl, that tightness he’d been carrying around with him dissolving at the sight of his best friend. 

“It’s a bit cold, Rich. Practicing your Joker laugh, or-?”

“What does it fucking look like, Stan?” he all but growled, screwing his eyes shut; wanting to scream and push and cry and hold and to make it stop.

His eyes were still shut when Stanley wrapped an arm around him, tugging the taller boy down to a hug. “It looks like you need a hug.”

Stan smelled like lavender shampoo and cedar trees, and the smell took Richie back years, back to nights reading comics and the world melting away until all that mattered were the people in the room.

“Sap.”

Stan chuckled, pulling back. “Seriously, what’s up? Laughing in the middle of a back field? That’s weird even for you, Trashmouth.”

“It’s stupid.”

“That doesn’t work on me. Talk.”

Richie sighed, sitting unceremoniously in his heels. Shrugging his jacket off and laying it on the ground, Stan sat down next to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. Taking a deep, shuddering breath in. 

“Do you remember what Mike said?” he asked, unwilling to meet Stan’s eyes. “He. Well. Uh. Fuck, he was right.”

“You don’t get crushes?”

Richie signed, leaning further onto Stanley, desperate to soak up the last dredges of affection he could before he ended their friendship with the next eight words.

“What if a boy likes another boy?”

Stan’s eyes widened in understanding, and he scooted backwards, his hand falling off of Richie’s shoulder. For one horrible moment, the pit in Richie’s chest grew larger, the gnawing hunger spreading all through his body until he felt dizzy. The silence, the horrible, awful silence stretched like a living thing between them, something slimy and evil. 

“I thought I was the only one,” Stanley whispered, and Richie’s world came crashing down around him. 

“I- What?”

Stan met his eyes, then, and there was so much fear in his eyes, so much vulnerability that it ached to look at him. 

“...”

The grey in Richie’s world fell away, replaced with a dizzying sway of technicolor. The world seemed bright, alive - but nothing in comparison to Stanley, glowing in pale blue and tinged golden. There were thousands of memories in his eyes: quiet giggles and patient explanations and a body pressed against his as two people stared at one comic book. Warm laughs and sharp jests and the barely-there touches of hands as the group walked. 

He wondered how long it had been happening; he’d always known, but he found himself wondering how he didn’t know even earlier, didn’t know from the first time Stanley tentatively extended a hand to him in the primary school playground.

“...Rich?” Stanley sounded so afraid - of him - that something in Richie just snapped.

Stan’s lips were soft and warm, and if the world ended, Richie wouldn’t have minded. When he pulled back after a moment, Stan’s eyes were wide open, and their faces were close enough that Richie could see the barely-there caramel freckles on Stan’s cheekbones. 

Belatedly, Richie realized he should say something. “Uh… wow. Come here often?”

Stan threw his head back and laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> A big thank you to stcnbrough on Twitter for reading this over for me. Love ya.


End file.
